


leave these lulling shores

by thisstableground



Series: All Do No Harm/In The Heights crossovers [11]
Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Folklore, Merpeople, Multi, Selkies, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-09 19:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11111262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: They meet in the waves in the midst of a song.[A short introduction to three creatures.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: there's a chance i'll never expand on this, but shapechangersinwinter on tumblr was talking about selkie!ruben and making me think about ot3 mythology au, so here's a thing. it's not quite a fic so much as a description, because i was only intending to draw it, but nevertheless: a thing. it's also not ot3 here but if i ever write more it will be]

Ruben is a selkie. A very, _very_ clever selkie, so clever that they’ve heard his name on land and sea. He knows all kinds of things both magical and scientific, and Jason’s not sure which of those categories his problem falls under, but he needs a solution and this selkie who knows all about all kinds of worlds might be the one to find the answer. Ruben goes willingly at first, but time passes and things get difficult and Jason is hesitant to give him his skin back - “of course i’m not keeping you hostage, Ruben, it’s just in case. Please stay?” - and Ruben’s a little uncertain but he likes Jason (he likes Jason a _lot_ ), Jason likes him (not so much, but it will do), this is probably fine. He’ll go back to the sea soon enough, and he is just so fascinated by this strange human with his strange condition that maybe Ruben can discover more about.

Except Ian finds out, and now Ian keeps his skin too, tears parts of it away tauntingly, never enough to destroy but enough to damage forever. Jason says, “it’s not for much longer, Ruben, please”, and Ruben wavers but Jason needs his help. And Ian gets angrier. And Ruben gets more scared. And then he runs - he _swims_ , far far out to the Jamaican shoreline, not far enough because Ian finds him there.

Ruben gets away again. Eventually. But it cost him so much, and now he can’t go back home because Jason lives along that coast. He swims, he hurts, he swims, and he never gets to rest, and he never gets to go home.

***

  
Usnavi is not, as many believe him to be, a siren. Common misunderstanding, for their kind in general, the two often get mixed up and Usnavi sitting up on the rocks and singing, singing, singing doesn’t exactly help correct false impressions. But the sirens fly high and he’s just your basic merman. What it is, is that there’s merfolk who have never broken above the top of the waves, and the ones like him who’ve been around a little more and pick up some interesting new harmonies that they sing under the sun. His family came here from waters far away and on the way he heard the sirens, he enjoys the song, even if it’s not the same one most of them sing in the depths. But he sits up on the rocks, and people seem to like hearing him, so merpeople and humans and all sorts of folk and faerie tend to cross his path. Perhaps this is why they mistake him for a siren: creatures just seem drawn to him, like moths to flame.  
  
It’s not actually any kind of magic. Usnavi’s just a really nice guy, so nice that it pours off him like waterfalls: you can see it in the way he swims and hear it echo in every note. He’s a gentle soul to the ones who come to him, no talons to tear with. He just likes to hear the stories, and retell them to the next passers-by, and to watch the ships. He was named for one of them, and he likes to think about where they’re headed.

***

Vanessa is a siren proper, beautiful and dangerous. A voice that breaks your heart and talons that break the skin of the weak and witless men on the endless passing ships who fall under her spell. She flies, she sings, she rips men apart and they practically thank her for it, drawn to her music like a light beacon in the middle of the night and by the dawn there’s nothing of them left.

Sometimes it’d be nice to just sing, just for the pleasure of it, by herself. But wherever the song is, there they all are, offering themselves (like she wants them) and money (like she needs it) and adventure (like their ships can take her further than her own wings can carry). She can’t get a minute’s goddamn peace. Like here, now, this morning in the early light she sings and there’s someone speaking to her within _seconds_.  
  
“Wow, you’ve got a lovely voice,” he says, but when she turns to him with feathers bristling he’s not what she expected. Just some big-eyed mer-guy lounging on the rocks in a slightly damp hat, looking vaguely surprised at his own boldness in talking to her.  
  
“Thanks?” she says.  
  
“You…uh, um, I mean. Would you like to. Um. I like singing too. Would you maybe like to sing, with me, sometime? Only if you want to, I mean.” He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, with a hopeful smile.  
  
“I don’t know, honey,” she says, amused. _That’s_ an offer she doesn’t get every day. “There’s not many can match the voice of a siren.”  
  
“Ah, probably not. But there’s not many sirens can match me for enthusiasm,” he says, grinning, and he’s so sweet she can’t help but agree to sing with him.

She was right, his voice isn’t the best, cracks on the high notes but it’s not at all unpleasant. And it’s _fascinating_ , dips sometimes into a weird rhythmic chatter that pulls on something in her heart, so that maybe she understands a little why men are drawn to her.

He turns somersaults in the sea when they finish their duet, clumsy and elated. She laughs.

Vanessa never met someone who could make her laugh before. And nothing in her itches to tear his skin apart.  
  
Interesting.

***

Ruben swims, and hurts, and never rests. He sleeps a little sometimes, but he’s vulnerable on land proper and vulnerable on rocks and it’s rest for necessity that’s never restful enough. He just wants it all to stop. He doesn’t even know where he is right now, lying on a rock, fingers trailing in the water, warm under the sunlight.

There’s music in the air, way way overhead. A siren, maybe. There’s a lot he’s heard about sirens, he’s been warned like he was warned about humans. Perhaps he should be wary.

Ruben never was much good at listening to warnings, from others or himself.

There’s another voice underneath, less polished, and the siren in response sings warmer. It doesn’t sound seductive, a melody coaxing him to his death, though he thinks he’d be an easy target if anyone were to try. 

It sounds _happy_.

Well. If Ruben can’t be happy himself (and he’s not sure he was ever made to be) he can at least let someone else’s happiness heal his aching heart.

He sleeps.

***

Usnavi has seen the selkie, swimming the same currents as him across the past few days. He doesn’t know many selkies. It’s strange to see a creature so very much like him and so different all at once, one thing under water and another above the waves, half-wrapped in his tattered and torn sealskin while he lies on the rocks and stares at the sun.

The selkie seems unhappy. His eyes are hard to look away from, even at a distance. Usnavi wonders if all selkies look so sad, just because of those eyes, but it’s sadness in the way he moves as well, and the way he runs his human fingers wistfully along the broken parts of his skin.

The selkie seems unhappy, and he seems tired, and Usnavi knows that selkies and sirens never quite get on, but Vanessa is flying high on the wind - they’ve been together for some time now, which is kind of hard to explain but whatever, at least they’re happy - and doesn’t want to come in to land today, so this seems like the time to do something. He’s pretty sure if he intervenes he can get Vanessa on side with him. She’s softer than the stories would say.

Usnavi sings loud, loud, loud and Vanessa above the clouds sings back to him.

The selkie stirs in the sunlight and blinks his big, dark eyes. Usnavi sings sweeter, as sweetly as he can, and Vanessa’s voice in return is full of a love the men in ships will never hear from her. The selkie blinks again slowly, once, twice, and then his eyelids stay closed as he falls into a slumber.

That’s a victory, if ever Usnavi saw one. Dude looks like he needs it. Usnavi’s always been real good at looking out for people.  
  
Usnavi lets himself drift in gentle waves not too far away, and waits for the selkie to wake.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: oh look it turned into a thing, like all my oneshots do. 
> 
> content warnings: attempted suicide, implied/discussed past rape (not explicit)]

The sun has barely shifted so Ruben can’t have slept for long, which makes it so strange that he feels almost rested upon waking.

“Hi!” says a cheerful voice “I’m Usnavi! What’s your name?”

“ _What the fuck_ ,” says Ruben, pulling the folds of his sealskin all the way to his shoulders. He won’t let them take it from him again, he won’t let them see him again -

“Oh, shit, sorry,” says the voice again. “That was probably not the chillest way to wake up, right?”

It takes Ruben a moment to find the source, disoriented as he is, and besides there’s some level of camouflage afforded to the merman (Usnavi, he’d called himself Usnavi) by the mottled blue lines across his body, the green-tipped scales iridescent in the water, though he’s not so hard to see now that Ruben’s looking. The merfolk Ruben’s met before are all deep-dwellers, pale flashes of white barely distinguishable amongst the shifting refracted light patterns far down below the waves. Usnavi's skin glows gold in between the scales, floating freely on the surface with tail lazily waving, and there's warm patches of reddish-orange mixed in amongst the green.

It’s a very good look, if Ruben is honest.

“You’re up high, for a merman,” he says.

“The acoustics are better up here,” Usnavi says. “I like to sing.”

He demonstrates. The sound is familiar. 

“It was you I heard earlier, with the siren?”

“Vanessa, yeah. She’s my girl,” Usnavi tells him, eyes gleaming with barely hidden delight.

“You’re _dating_ a siren?” Ruben asks, incredulously.

“They’re really not what you think,” says Usnavi, a little defensive. “She’s not so harsh when you get to know her. I never really got the selkie-siren beef, honestly.”

“I’ve got no problem with sirens,” says Ruben, and it’s true. It had always seemed arbitrary, to hate a whole species just because they were born different to his own. Their ways of feeding might be harsh, but it’s how they were made to survive. All creatures strive. “They just don’t seem like the commitment type.”

“That’s a fair assessment,” Usnavi concedes. “But Vanessa’s special. Did you like our lullaby?”

Had they been singing _to_ him? And wait, has Usnavi been watching him sleep? Why?

Usnavi’s eyes are a thin ring of pale gold-brown mostly hidden behind pupils large and dark, and they radiate guilelessness. Ruben should know better than to let his guard down around a creature of magic (or any creature at all, perhaps) but then Usnavi could have just killed him while he slept if that’s what he was about, and Ruben has nothing of value that can be taken from him.

“Is Usnavi your real name?” he asks instead of voicing any of this.

“Yep,” says Usnavi. “Something I can call you?”

What a thing to give a total stranger, a name. What a thing to let them hold over you. Ruben was always too trusting with his, and learnt the lesson harshly not to let another have that kind of power. Your name, your skin, your intelligence, the only things you have. It can be ruined so easily by unkind hands and unkind voices.

So he doesn’t know what it is that makes him say, “my name is Ruben.”

***

There’s one specific rock that Ruben’s come to think of as his, in the short time since he’s been here. It’s in the centre of an almost-circle of peaks and pinnacles of stone some ways out from any shoreline, quiet and hidden. Usnavi travels sometimes to the edge of the stone circle to see the ships that pass, but Ruben would rather stay far away from humans and his spot is perfect for that. If he times his hunt just right he can return well-fed with the tide when it’s close to the water’s surface, and climb back on with relative ease to bask under the sunlight.

Sometimes he times it wrong or the hunt drags on and he must find another place to stay. Sometimes he’s just overcome by sudden, devastating weariness and lets himself drift to wherever is closest until his energy returns, which is what’s happened today. He lies half-human and face-down against the damp grey stone with a sigh.

“And who is this I find emerging from the sea to come and meet desire,” says a voice, husky and feminine and slightly mocking. He opens his eyes and twists round to see a figure almost-human above him, though if he concentrates he can see the shape that lies not-below-but-adjacent, the form in the liminal dimension that he occupies himself when he swims inside his sealskin. The wings are the most tangibly otherworldly part. A siren.

“Would you be Vanessa, by any chance?” Ruben asks.

“Aw, what the fuck,” she says, her voice suddenly losing the seductive edge. “Oh. You been talking to Usnavi? I _told_ him to keep the name thing on the DL.”

“I’ve only known him for like two weeks, so I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to keep anything anywhere,” says Ruben. “He’s very…open.”

“That sounds like Usnavi,” agrees the siren. “Anyway, back to the thing, emerging to meet desire or whatever. But I thought your kind was immune to our song.”

“I am,” says Ruben. “I just landed here to rest. This is pure coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence. What is it that you seek, selkie?”

“There’s nothing that I want from you,” he replies.

Vanessa raises an eyebrow. She looks human and unreasonably beautiful, if Ruben ignores the shifting behind and on top of her skin. “In my experience, males always want something, no matter what kind of creature he is.”

“I want to sleep,” he says. “But feel free to tear my heart out while I’m here, if it’ll make you happy.”

“It takes the fun out of it if you just _let_ me do it,” she says, vaguely exasperated.

( _Fighting just makes it more fun for me_ , Ian had said through bleeding lips. Ruben’s teeth are sharp but he was hesitant to use them against the body Jason shared, and Ian was strong, and Ian didn’t seem to notice the pain.)

“I don’t want to be fun,” says Ruben.

“You’re doing a stellar job of that,” says Vanessa. “Though I’ll admit you’re a little bit interesting. Usnavi would probably be sad if I ate you.”

“The siren thing,” says Ruben, an idea creeping treacherously to mind. “You lure people here with promises to fulfil their greatest wants and then kill them instead, right?”

“That’s the gig. What greed lies in the heart of man, all that shit.”

“What if a man asked you to kill him? If that were all he wanted from you. Would you do it?”

She studies him with beady black eyes. “Is that scientific curiosity or is it a request?” she asks quietly.

“I’m tired,” Ruben tells her, closing his eyes. “I just want to sleep.”

He hears her footsteps coming closer and thinks maybe she will help him, but there’s no ripping talons to bring him relief, only a soft sound of feathers. When he looks again she’s taken flight. Ruben never does get what he wants.

Except that drifting from somewhere distant comes Vanessa’s voice and it’s raised in a lullaby. He lets it guide him into sleep, and that will do for the moment.

***

They sing to him every night. More than that, they come to him during the day, bringing him curious things from depths he can’t swim to or items from far away nests and roosts, trinkets and fossils and flora that he explains to them.

They like to listen to him. it’s strange. He likes to talk to them, too, which is also strange. He thinks this might be friendship. It feels better than whatever he had with Jason. It definitely feels better than Ian, though the prospect of Vanessa tearing his ribcage open also seemed like it would feel better than Ian, so that’s hardly a good point of comparison.

“I got it off a sailor,” Usnavi says, passing something up to Ruben on his rock.

“It’s a compass,” says Ruben. “It uses the magnetic field of the earth to always pull the needle northwards, so if you know the way you need to go you can always find your bearings even without the stars. Couldn’t the sailors tell you that?”

“Probably. But I like it when _you_ tell me things,” says Usnavi. Ruben can’t hide the smile that it draws out of him, and Usnavi looks victorious. “Anyway, the sailors always just want to tell me about girls they meet in taverns or how tired they are of ship’s food. You know so much about the world.”

Ruben twists the compass in his hands, watching the needle twitch and pull inexorably to the north. He knows too many things. “You should be more careful about who you go round talking to, Usnavi.”

“It’s fine,” Usnavi says dismissively. “The guys on the ships always like me. And I like hearing about the shore. Have you ever been there?”

“A couple times,” says Ruben.

“What’s it like?”

It’s like noise and heat and dust. Like a million souls crammed where there’s only space for a hundred, not the vast silent stretches of the sea. It’s like the taste of nature in the air and hard, hard work and the bustle of trade. It’s like being unmade under Ian’s ice-blue eyes.

In Jamaica, the few short weeks he spent there, he came across a store that sold all kinds of impractical aesthetic items, cheap and expensive alike. Shells and coral and woven bracelets. Directly under the watchful eye of the merchant and locked behind glass, the items of more value: carved sea glass jewellery; pearls in polished oyster shells; small, shining sheets of mermaid scale.

“Dangerous,” he says. “ _Please_ be careful, Usnavi.”

“I always am,” says Usnavi cheerfully, which is a blatant lie, but Ruben doesn’t push it.

***

Ruben came from drowning, or so the stories say. Selkies, the souls of sea-lost sailors born new into their seal skins, neither of the land or of the waves, or maybe of both. None of them will ever know who they used to be, if so. But Ruben thinks sometimes he can remember drowning. His lungs are airless far too often, though they never do him the courtesy of just straight up giving out on him so that it can finally be over.

That could be changed. He sits half in his skin and lets his tail trail below him. A quick swim down too far to float back up, and after that all he has to do is nothing.

He did nothing when Jason locked his skin away.

He did nothing when Ian-

He’s good at doing nothing, is the point, and he’s also good at swimming. One last look at the blinding bright sky, and then he slips below the waves and seeks out the darkness.

It closes round him as the light loses its battle against the depths and then closes again around his sight completely. The sealskin billows round him in the water because he chose to do this mostly-human. There’s spots in his vision, there’s a clawing in his chest and he doesn’t know if it’s genuine regret or a trick from his air-starved brain but he’s suddenly filled with terror and strikes in a direction he hopes is upwards. Too late, too late, he’s too far down and his body too weak, and his mouth opens automatically to gasp. The water rushes in, pressing and insistent all around and inside him.

There’s no sound that would travel to his ears down here but he hears a roaring anyway, so loud it almost distracts him from whatever just grabbed him round the waist. Not quite, though, and when he goes to scream instinctively he only inhales water again. Death comes to him fast with a rushing sensation, with growing patches of light shimmering in his clouded sight. He doesn’t know whether he meant to do this. He’d just wanted it to stop.

Except as the light grows brighter there’s a surface to be broken, and in the sudden atmosphere Ruben breathes and chokes and coughs and vomits out seawater til his throat is ripped and burning. It takes a long, long while for the haze of drowning to clear, and the whole time there’s arms around him and a presence at his back to stop him sinking again in his confused exhaustion.

“Ruben,” says a voice in the way that suggests they’ve been saying it repeatedly. He tries to wriggle free but then he’s being turned, and Usnavi is staring at him with distress ringing clear from every inch of him, still holding him up by the arms. “Ruben, what the hell happened?’

“I was trying to- I wanted to- I don’t know,” he stutters out. He can’t say it. He doesn’t know if he’s relieved that it didn’t work, he doesn’t know how he feels. His head hurts.

“Ruben, did you swim that far down on purpose?” Usnavi asks, and his face crumples up in grief when Ruben nods.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he whispers, and doesn’t resist it when Usnavi pulls him into a hug.

“Don’t do it again,” Usnavi pleads. “I can’t stand the idea of you doing that again. We can fix whatever’s wrong. I don’t want you to die.”

“You’ve hardly known me any amount of time,” says Ruben. “I’ve been here what, two months at most? You don't even know where I came from.”

“I know that I like you,” says Usnavi. “I’d miss having you around. Isn’t that enough?”

As easy as that, and so _genuine_. Ruben has always been too trusting, has always paid for it. He doesn’t want to let anyone near him so quickly, not after last time.

Usnavi is making that resolution very, very difficult.

“Please. I can’t be there every time. What if I’d been five minutes later and just found you there dead? What if you’d just disappeared and I never knew what happened? Please tell me you won’t do it again.”

“I can’t,” says Ruben. “I don’t know if I even meant to do it this time.”

“Then next time you _wait_ for me,” says Usnavi, and he almost sounds angry. “I’m never far away. Or if you yell for her, Vanessa will hear you. We may not be able to stop you, if you really mean to do it. But will you at least promise to wait, and to say goodbye?”

He thinks about water pouring into his lungs, about being a creature almost of the sea that dies by drowning. He thinks of knowing the moment before death that it was a mistake and being helpless against fate.

“Okay,” he says, hoping that he means it. “I promise.”

***

Vanessa comes to him the next day, landing unnecessarily hard beside his head just for the dramatic effect.

“You upset Usnavi,” she says, accusingly.

“You here to kill me this time, then?” says Ruben. He asks that every time, a nearly-joke with too much hope laid underneath it, though today he just feels hollow.

“No,” she says. “I’m here to yell at you. What the fuck were you thinking? What’s your problem? Why are you so obsessed with dying?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t!” she shouts. Ruben thought sirens were supposed to be good at keeping their cool. Vanessa’s kind of hot-headed. “Usnavi likes you and I don’t like it when he’s sad, that’s all. And I’ve got used to having you around, I guess, and you’ve got those big soppy eyes that kind of make it hard not to- anyway, it’s just not okay, and I want to know what your deal is so I can make you not do it again.”

He tilts his head and blinks at her.

“ _Stop_ it with the eyes,” she grumbles. “Okay. I kinda like you too, I suppose. You’re interesting and you’ve got a good heart - I’m not saying that in the carnivore way - and I like listening to you talk. I’m invested. So talk. Now.”

“It’s not the nicest story,” Ruben warns her.

“I’m not the nicest person. I can handle it,” she replies, and then her voice turns something close to gentle. “Is it…whatever happened to your sealskin?”

She indicates where it’s laying across Ruben’s legs, and he traces a thumb across a beaten, broken patch. Ian hadn’t treated it kindly, when it was in his possession. “I went to shore. Before I came here, I went to shore.” 

Vanessa settles her agitation, sits beside him. Ruben’s never spoken about this before. But what difference does it make, for her to know?

“There was a man,” he says. “Or he was two men at once, technically. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

He doesn’t know how to tell this story. “Men always want something, didn’t you say? Desire. Or lust. Or whatever.”

“Ruben,” says Vanessa, warily. “What did he do to you?”

Ruben sighs, and rolls over to stare into the sky. “I should have ripped his throat out while I had the chance.”

***  


Vanessa says sometimes she wishes she knew what it was like under the waves, with a hint of jealousy that Ruben and Usnavi get to share this domain.

What she doesn’t know is that the ocean only really belongs to Usnavi, and Usnavi to the ocean, it adores him so. He can swim down as far as pressure and the threat of the unknown dark-dwelling creatures allows him. Ruben can swim deep, can swim far, but in the end he always has to come up for air. He’s caught between the sea and the sky and the land is limited for him. The wind lifts Vanessa to the heights she craves whenever she takes wing. The currents adopted Usnavi when his own parents passed away to raise him as their own. Ruben went to the land, and the land took him and twisted him. Where can he go that belongs to him? What place wants Ruben to belong in return?

He used to have his skin, a lonely comfort but at least it was his own. Now, even as he wraps it warm around himself, he knows that it is something that can be taken from him unwillingly. There’s no home here for his human bones to rest safe inside.

But there’s a song piercing through the sea-mist above and an echo answers from the deeps, and there’s a refrain repeated within it that he’s learnt means _Ruben_. It eases the ache a little.

***  


Ruben never leaves his sealskin fully these days. He lets it surround him completely in the water, that strange translucence of sight and thought where what he sees and what he perceives come through different bodies and different awarenesses simultaneously, a coalescence of the parts of him that science cannot reach. On land he used to wander in human clothes, or carelessly naked, because what is modesty to a monster?

That’s what Ian had called him, a monster, as he kicked the skin around in the dust of Jamaican soil. Spat on it, tore it, heated metal in the fireplace to hold against it so it burned without igniting. The wounds still remain on both of Ruben’s forms: the two are linked, always. _Pretend to be human all you want, but you can’t hide those eyes,_ he’d said. _Jason doesn’t want you. He just wants your brain._

That’s what Ian had called him. _Who the hell would want a thing like you_ , he’d asked, as though his hands weren’t exploring underneath Ruben’s shirt as he spoke. _I’m doing you a favor, Rubes,_ he’d said. _I’m letting you experience_ ** _humanity_** _. The very essence of it. Say thank you._

Ruben still lies human from the waist up most days, he likes the clarity of sight and thought even when it hurts to think, but he keeps his tail at all times now, the unworn upper segments of skin pooled around his hips in folds and drapes held up by unknown forces. At least the magic understands and assists with his newfound need for modesty, borne not of shyness but of knowledge. His human form is vulnerable: it, too, can be taken unwillingly.

He will not walk naked. He will not be touched again. He knows monsters. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: same warnings, discussed/implied rape and allusion to a suicide attempt, not explicit for either of them. plus some added violence.]

“It used to be my dad’s. Some captain gave it him for helping fix up their ship after a real bad storm. The only payment he’d accept. Dad always helped everyone, never asked much in return. It reminds me to try and be more like him, you know?”

“Seems to be working,” says Ruben softly, and Usnavi smiles at him. “Although what I meant by _explain the hat_ is explain how it stays on when you’re swimming. It’s been making me crazy trying to figure it out.”

“Oh!” say Usnavi. “I’ve never really been sure, to be honest? I figure the ocean just knows I like having it on so it lets it stay. Me and the sea are _tight_ , yo.”  
  
“That doesn’t make much sense, scientifically.”  
  
“ _You_ don’t make much sense scientifically,” Usnavi retorts. “Like, deadass you actually don’t, here you’re asking about the hat but I’ve been wondering how’d you keep the tail on when you’re only half in it? I didn’t think that was how selkies worked.”

He has a point.

“It’s not, usually,” says Ruben, frowning. “Same reason, I guess. Something out there knows I need it.”

It’s a comforting way to frame it, whether it’s true or not. Ruben sometimes itches at the thought of all the things about his own existence that will never be explained. Usnavi does a slow and thoughtful forward roll. “Vanessa told me about the man you met on shore.”  
  
“Oh?” says Ruben, trying to sound detached.

“I know he hurt you bad. But I don’t really know what she means by what he did. It all sounded very… _human_.”

“The very essence of it,” quotes Ruben, bitterly, and Usnavi makes a quizzical face. “It’s supposed to mean love, for humans,” he explains through gritted teeth. “What he did, it’s supposed to be an act of love. But only if it’s given freely, like giving up your skin. I didn’t want to, and he took anyway, and it _hurt_. He told me to thank him for it. The best something like me could hope to get, he said.”

It’s the best explanation he can give. If there’s a merfolk equivalent of this kind of violation then Ruben doesn’t have the knowledge to draw the comparison. Usnavi looks heartbroken, far more than Ruben would expect considering he doesn’t comprehend the subtleties. Then again, even if Usnavi doesn’t understand humans and their bodies and their specific kinds of violence, he understands love beyond anything else. Love shattered like a broken bottle and the sharp edges used to hurt another must seem so terrible to him.

“I’m sorry,” Usnavi says. The words are too small to ease the sting. Ruben’s grateful anyway.

“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not a big deal, just some human thing. It doesn’t mean the same for selkies, really. I’m fine.”   
  
He hunches small and doesn’t think about Ian, or about swimming too far down into deep, deep water.

Usnavi contemplates him critically with a crinkled brow for a moment, then in a decisive move that makes Ruben jump, takes his hat and places it on Ruben’s head.

“What are you doing?” Ruben asks, confused.

“Testing a hypothesis, you’d probably call it.” He gives a dazzling grin, light and bright as though the previous conversation hadn’t even happened, except that one of his webbed hands squeezes Ruben’s shoulder and lingers there after.  
  
“Yeah? And what’s your conclusion?”  
  
“Hypothesis confirmed. You _do_ look crazy good in hats.”

He looks far too self-satisfied at Ruben’s reluctant smile. Usnavi is ridiculous. Ruben’s become stupidly fond of him, entirely against his own plans or promises to live out here in solitude. He pulls the hat down so he can hardly see out from under it: the weight of it on his head is comforting, in the same way that he always feels safer under the heaviness of his sealskin.

***

The tide around his rock is dropped too low for him to reach it just yet, and he’s already eaten today, so Ruben is just drifting lazily bare-chested in the water while he waits for it to rise. The eddying currents take him within earshot of an annoyed voice saying “motherfucking goddamn son-of-a-bitch _wings_ ”. Vanessa’s standing on a stone nearby, twisting awkwardly trying to reach her matted and ruffled plumage. He paddles in her direction, silently.

“Someone sounds happy this morning,” he says, enjoying the way her feathers puff up angrily at being caught off guard. On realising it’s only Ruben, she looks slightly embarrassed. 

“I just ate,” she explains, folding her damp wings behind her. “This is the bit they don’t tell you about sirens: it takes effort to look effortlessly sexy. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of feathers? And I can never reach the ones at the damn back.”

“I can help you, if you like?”

Vanessa gives him a disbelieving look and he cringes. “Sorry. That’s probably a weird thing to offer, right? Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“No, help would be good. Usnavi sometimes tries but he’s not really got the fingers for it. It’s just that this isn’t the cleanest job, or the quickest. You sure you wanna commit to that?”

“I can handle getting my hands dirty,” he says. “What do I need to do?”

She demonstrates the action on one ruffled dark feather, a simple dragging motion between index and middle finger in the direction of the barb. Ruben climbs onto the rock and settles behind her to get to work.

There’s something calming about it,methodically taking feather by feather and smoothing away the traces of violence, dipping his hand occasionally into the water to wash off the gore and watching it spiral scarlet outwards and dissipate. Though she’s right, it does take a _long_ time.

“How’d you manage to get it all over like this? You must be a messy eater.”

“I like to play with my food,” she says. “I’m surprised you’re so comfortable with it.”

“It’s only blood. Well, plus some extra gristle, but it’s all pretty much the same. And there’s worse reasons to hurt someone than for food. Everyone’s gotta eat.”

“I thought selkies were supposed to be soft-hearted,” she teases.

“I thought sirens weren’t,” he shoots back. “You’re very concerned about my feelings right now.”

“I enjoy what I do, you know. It’s fun. Doesn’t that scare you? Isn’t that everything you’re afraid of?”

There’s a phantom itch in Ruben’s teeth that persists almost all the day, relieved only barely when he hunts. There’s a phantom taste of blood like metal when he remembers Ian’s mouth on his, how he’d bitten down. He’d been savagely delighted at the way Ian pulled back with a shout, could’ve torn into him over and over till there was nothing left of Ian but his bones and it scared Ruben, how much he wanted to do that, so he backed down. Did nothing, let it happen, and still uncertain now if he made the right decision.

“You don’t scare me,” is all he says.

“Because you don’t care if you die?”

That at first, and still sometimes, but now something else besides.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” he asks, instead of answering her question.

“Call it a moment of generosity,” she says. “You wanted nothing, and that’s what I gave you.”

She had sung him to sleep, the first time she met him, and every night since. Ruben’s fingers are tingling pleasantly from where they’ve been carefully preening Vanessa’s feathers over and over, and some way out to sea he can see Usnavi arcing graceful, gleeful somersaults against the bright blue of the sky. 

“I wanted more than that. You gave me more than that,” he says.

***

He wakes laying face up on his rock to the sound of a commotion and is full selkie and almost submerged before he’s even completely conscious, hiding low on the wave and scanning the surroundings for danger.

There, by the break in the circular rocks, a reasonably-sized fishing boat. This isn’t fishing grounds, not enough to be caught here to make the trip worthwhile. But the men aboard are shouting, and struggling with the net.

Ruben, too curious for his own good, swims closer, making sure to remain underwater and unseen. Whatever’s in the net is large and struggling. Those shades of turquoise and gold, the occasional bright flash of shining red scales are visible for only the barest few seconds before the fishermen finally pull it out of the water, but that’s enough for Ruben to recognise, like drowning all over again. 

It’s _Usnavi.  
_

In this skin Ruben is not seal but selkie: two things at once, a spectre between the shifting planes. Neither body is real, so both bodies are real. His seal self propels him forward fast, his human hands allow him to climb the net and tear at it, panic making his fingers as useless as the flippers which still surround them; his seal voice howls in fear and rage while his human voice says “Usnavi, I’m here, I won’t let them have you”.

“Ruben!” Usnavi gasps, terrified. “Ruben, help me, get me out, get me _out_!”

There’s yelling from on deck. Ruben rips into the thick rope with his pointed teeth.

“What the hell is _that_? It’s going to fuck up our catch!”

“Do something!”

The strong woven fibres are starting to snap, but too soon to save Usnavi there’s someone clubbing Ruben sharply with an oar, unbalancing him, and his head cracks hard against the side of the boat as he falls. He feels it in both forms. Usnavi is yelling, or crying, or calling out his name, it’s hard to tell which. Ruben barely has the wherewithal to turn himself on his back as everything fades black.

***

He wakes floating face up with a searing headache in an empty sea.

“No,” he says, “Usnavi, no, no, _no_ —“ but there’s nothing, not a sign of the boat or an indication as to where it might be headed.

He needs a better vantage point. Get to higher ground, the closest of the towering rocks that circle his home. Ruben sheds his skin entirely at the base, not even caring that this is the first time in weeks he’s been in fully human form, and he climbs.

It takes forever, he climbs forever, with bleeding palms and the soft, uncalloused soles of his feet cut up, and every so often he looks out across the sea and can’t see a single sign of a boat.

Climb higher, search harder, he can’t give up on Usnavi. Some kind of hint, the barest smudge of shadow, there’s got to be _something_ , but he could be staring right at it without even realising. His eyes weren’t designed to look long-distance. The horizon line is empty, from what he can make out. Grief is a choking noose tightening round Ruben’s lungs.

Then: distant, almost inaudible, a familiar sound that makes Ruben’s heart leap, a familiar song. A call and response, but wherever Usnavi he is, he doesn’t answer. There’s a million explanations for that: Ruben hopes it’s not the one that immediately crosses his mind. The song rings out again, searching but not concerned.

Ruben can’t sing like they can, cutting across vast distances, but he can still make himself heard.

“Vanessa!” he screams. “Vanessa!” and hopes that more than just the wind will carry his voice to where she can hear it. It must do: the melody he recognises as his own name comes back to him in a fearful question and he can see her silhouette against the sun.

“Vanessa,” he shouts again, nearly sobbing with relief. “They took Usnavi!”

“ _What_?” she demands, catching the sheer rockface beside him and holding on one-handed, her wings helping keep her aloft. “Who took him? Where?”

“There was a boat, I don’t know where it went, I can’t see for shit above water. They’ll _kill_ him, Vanessa, they’re going to kill him!”

She shifts shape momentarily, the light downy feathers that circle her wrists and neck lengthening into sharp quills before they settle again.

“Not if I can fucking help it,” she spits, scanning the waves below them. Her sight is keener than his. “I see them,” she says grimly, and launches off the pinnacle, soaring away to leave Ruben clinging to it alone.

He can’t just do nothing. After a quick mental calculation he dives, hoping he eyeballed the distances right so as not to break himself on the rocks below. He plunges unharmed into deep water and surfaces close to his skin. 

Vanessa’s almost out of sight already as he slips inside it and swims in her direction, but the waves are in his favour. The ocean loves Usnavi: it calls a plaintive cry for them to bring him back home safe and pushes Ruben along Vanessa’s trail to speed him on his way. Or perhaps that’s all Ruben. There’s never been a reason for him to go this fast before, not even after Ian, but now Usnavi needs him.

He doesn’t know how long or far he swims, powerful under the surface and occasionally raising up to take a breath and check Vanessa’s flight path, when finally she gives a harrowing scream of anger and swoops down like a fired arrow. Ahead, the boat, Vanessa, a sudden tumult aboard as she lands amidst the sailors.She sees Ruben and yells “you get Usnavi, I’ll deal with these bastards.”

Swimming round to the other side, he finds what they’ve been searching for. The net is barely skimming the surface and there’s Usnavi, writhing and trying to push himself down into the two or three inches of water at the bottom, first on his back and then his stomach. He can breathe above the waves, but if he stays there too long he’ll die of dehydration, and the day is bright and hot. His skin and scales are draining of color, ashy-grey and faded.

Something Ruben wishes he didn’t know: they make the sheets of mermaid scale by drying out the body. What’s underneath shrivels and the scale slides off as easy as Ruben’s own second skin. Then they take a sharp knife and divide it, rehydrate and treat it so that it holds its original color, and sell it off in squares. Trade is legal in most countries, but hunting is not. That does not, of course, deter all hunters, and the money is phenomenal. Most of them just let their bounty perish and dry out inside the nets, so they can dispose of the remainder at sea. No mercy of a painless death can be found here.

Usnavi wasn’t made to be a thing confined: the sight of him suspended like this will likely linger far too long as yet another unwelcome presence in the back of Ruben’s mind. So will the agonised sounds coming from his parched throat, and the dull resignation on his face behind the fear, as though he knows his efforts to stay hydrated are just prolonging without hope. Too panicked to pay attention, it doesn’t seem like he’s noticed yet that he is to be saved, though the shrieks and shouts from the deck of the ship are unmistakably the sound of Vanessa hard at work.

As Ruben climbs once more to gnaw the rope, he hears Usnavi say his name in a voice too dry and cracking. Ruben could destroy whole armadas right now, but there’s more important work to be done. This time his efforts are uninterrupted. Someone on the ship yells “hey, get away from there—“ but if it’s aimed at him, it’s a short-lived objection: there’s a gruesomely wet ripping sound and the shout devolves into a gurgle.

They fall with the net as the rope gives in, and Usnavi tumbles free in a cloud of bubbles. He stays underneath with gills flickering before emerging above to stare in numb shock at Ruben. Ruben wails relief in his seal voice, while his human voice is chanting “Usnavi, Usnavi, I’ve got you, we found you, you’re okay”, and they wind around each other desperately with their tails twining. 

Usnavi clings and trembles then suddenly startles like somebody’s grabbed him.

“I need to swim,” he says, pushing free of Ruben’s hold. “I need to _swim_.”

He dives back beneath the surface, down and down and down, and Ruben can only go so far by his side before he needs air. Rising back to the top, he pulls himself on human arms onto the suddenly silent ship to find Vanessa.

It’s carnage all around her. Most days she walks an almost-human, like the depictions he’s seen of angels but with wings and dress in negative, but there’s always been a second self restless in Vanessa’s skin. It’s the shape she must assume when she stops singing to the sailors and begins the hunt, something he’s never seen before. This is the first time she’s been ugly on the eyes to him, her features too sharp and haggard in unearthly rage, beaklike and gaunt. It’s somehow no less lovely: there’s a different kind of beauty in the way she stands avenged in ink-black feathers against the red of blood and bodies, barefoot amongst the viscera. Ruben feels nothing for what remains of the crewmen strewn about the deck.

“Where is he?” she asks, frantic. “Did they hurt him?”

“He swam too deep, I couldn’t follow,” says Ruben. “He’s okay, I think. He’s scared.”

She gives a harsh, tearing scream that makes Ruben’s spine shiver an automatic warning of danger. “I should’ve let them live,” she says viciously. “I should’ve drawn it out and made them _feel_ it.”

Ruben doesn’t argue. There’s a part of him that wishes she’d left something for him, another part immensely grateful that he still doesn’t have to know what he is capable of when provoked, for fear that he too could paint the sea this shade of scarlet. The adrenaline suddenly drains off and he slumps against the railings, weak and wobbly. Vanessa kneels in front of him. Her clawed and bladelike fingers shift to something nearly human as she reaches out to him and puts a hand on either side of his face, leaving two bloodied imprints.

“You helped me find him,” she says. “I can’t ever repay you for that.” 

As though it were a favor. They’ve saved Ruben’s life more than they know. And he doesn’t like to think of living in an ocean with no Usnavi, for mostly selfish reasons. “I think we can call it even.”

She rests her forehead against his and they stay that way until Usnavi resurfaces, the radiance in his skin returning. His smile is shakier than usual, but at least it’s there. At least _he’s_ there.  
****

“ _Usnavi_ ,” says Vanessa, and nothing else.

“I want to go home,” he says, and his smile falters further. “Can we go home?”

“I don’t think I can swim that far again just yet,” Ruben tells them apologetically. “I’ve never gone that fast before.”

“I could carry you, if you wanted,” says Vanessa slowly. “But you’d have to go full human. There’s a limit to how much weight I can hold while I’m flying.”

“I could take the sealskin no problem,” says Usnavi. “But if you don’t want to take it off, we can just wait until you’re ready to swim back yourself?”  
****

He doesn’t look happy at the thought.

“You could just go without me,” Ruben suggests, but both of them immediately and loudly refuse.

“Do you really wanna hang around this place by yourself?” Usnavi adds, skeptical.

Ruben looks around the boat, bloodsoaked decks and the tattered remains of rope where the net was hanging off to starboard. Vanessa’s gaze keeps flickering towards it: Usnavi is determinedly looking in the opposite direction.

“No, I don’t. We’re leaving,” Ruben says. “You can carry me, Vanessa.”

He makes to leave his sealskin but Vanessa holds a hand up. “Wait a sec,” she says, and with one elongating claw rips a rectangle of fabric out from the sail. When Ruben steps out on his legs she wraps the material round his waist, tying it at the hip.

“Thank you,” he says, quiet. He passes the skin to Usnavi, who folds it with such tender, careful hands that it makes Ruben’s heart ache.

“Alright. Let’s blow this joint, this party sucks,” Vanessa says, manoeuvring Ruben into a bridal carry with far more ease than her slender frame would suggest her capable of. “You ready to go, Usnavi?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he mutters. “Oh, hold up—“

He drapes Ruben’s sealskin over one shoulder to cast his hands about in the water and then plunges down a little with an _a-ha!_ , comes back up wringing out his hat. He fixes it on his head, adjusts it to the perfect angle, and nods in satisfaction.

“Alright. _Now_ I’m ready,” he says, and he sounds almost his usual self.

_***_

They get back home to their circle of stone as the sun begins to set, the tide high around Ruben’s rock so that it’s almost level with the water. Ruben’s legs give out the second Vanessa sets him down.

Taking his sealskin from Usnavi, he curls up exhausted underneath it. Nobody knows what to say. Usnavi floats staring at the sky, silent. Vanessa is hunched next to Ruben, visibly trying to make her feathers lie flat, but they keep flickering out half-heartedly in tired bursts of anger, until a frustrated sob escapes her throat, and then she can’t seem to stop herself once it’s begun.

Ruben’s never heard of sirens weeping before. Maybe none of them have until Vanessa. He thinks people would never stop speaking of it, if anyone but he and Usnavi had ever been witness to it. It’s a wrenching, devastating empty sound, like the lamenting of the drowned that rolls in on the tide, like the echoes in the hollows of the heart of a selkie who will never return to the sea.

“Vanessa, don’t cry,” says Usnavi, reaching out to her. “I’m okay.”

“I wouldn’t have ever found you,” she says in a tiny voice. “If Ruben hadn’t been here, if he hadn’t been looking out for you. I would’ve just assumed you were down too deep to hear me and then come back to find you gone and never even known what happened to you.”

“But he _was_ here, and you saved me, both of you,” Usnavi soothes her, smoothing down her feathers. He looks at Ruben. “How did you know where to find me? I saw them knock you out. Is your head okay?”

“It’ll be a hell of a bruise, but I’m fine. And Vanessa’s the one who spotted them. I didn’t actually do much other than follow her lead.”

“Bullshit,” says Vanessa, wiping her eyes. “He was climbing the rocks to try and look for the boat. It’s how I heard him shout for me. He was right the way up there.” She indicates with a wave.

“You _climbed_?” says Usnavi. “But you _never_ use your human legs. And how’d you get back down?”

“Jumped,” says Ruben.

“What the _fuck_ ,” says Usnavi admiringly.

Ruben shrugs, tries to pretend he’s not secretly impressed with himself too. It’s not as though he really thought it through at the time. “I did say I wouldn’t let them have you.”

Usnavi’s eyes are wide. Ruben knows what’s going to happen before it does: pulling himself out of the water on strong arms so forcefully he’s almost leaping, Usnavi presses his lips against Ruben’s, nearly knocking him over, tail twisting across Ruben’s lap. 

He could be afraid of this. But Usnavi’s lips are cold, Usnavi’s skin is slippery like a seal’s except for the occasional gentle snag of scales, Usnavi’s fingers are webbed and for all his enthusiasm, his touch is still soft. Ian’s mouth was burning hot like Jamaican sunshine and he didn’t care how rough his hands were. Usnavi doesn’t experience lust the way humans experience lust, and he’s not one for seeking power, but he knows love.

Ruben wants to know love too.

He opens his mouth and Usnavi’s tongue when it meets his is cool just like his lips, like the first taste of seawater when Ruben was finally free.

“Thank you,” says Usnavi as he eventually pulls away and slides back so his tail is resubmerged in the water, though he’s still holding on tight with both arms. “Ruben _. Thank you._ ”

Ruben lets Usnavi hide his face against his shoulder. Vanessa kisses the top of Usnavi’s head, then fixes her raven gaze on Ruben.

“We’d have done the same for you,” she says. “If we’d known you back then. I would have ripped apart the sky to find you.”

There’s still blood under her nails and drying in rust-red flakes on her face. Vanessa is a monster more than any of them, a terrifying and vengeful thing. But Ruben knows safety within her wings as she folds them above the three of them like a shield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: just a short epilogue after this, mostly written already so i'll put it up later/tomorrow.]


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: i dont have the willpower to wait between chapters, so here you go! the epilogue. warning for vague reference to past rape]

Vanessa flies.

She has seen greed, the thing that makes men wreck themselves against her like ships against sharp rocks, desire and lust their downfall. She’s heard what stories they tell about her kind: seductress, siren, monster.

That’s what they say, but here she is circling above a beachside town, and something else she knows is this: there’s children sleeping down below who she would never dream of hurting no matter what they asked of her. There’s people living here who would come to her and under the spell of her song say that what they want more than anything is just to feed their family. She always lets them free, though she offers them no help.

There’s someone who lived here once that told her in not so many words that all he wanted was to die, was to stop hurting. She did more than just spare him. Vanessa will not harm those without greed. That does not mean she is forgiving.

Questions are best asked around the outskirts, to those who are more hardened to the strangeness of the wilder world and less likely to lose their minds in fear at the sight of her. She tries to keep herself in check, stay the pretty face that makes folk drop their guard, though there’s the prickling of feathers waiting under her skin and many here who she would kill if it wouldn’t be a distraction.

There’s no way to find the origin of the boat that tried to take Usnavi. The mermaids have long been aware that some of their number disappear in the wake of ships, but nobody ever knew what exactly happens to them, and Usnavi has always been friends with people of all species with no harm come of it. Ruben told them later - reluctantly, after they pushed him, and with a sickened look on his face - about the marketplaces that sell remnants of beautiful creatures as though they never even belonged to the living, the squares of neatly-cut and lovely scale shining under glass.

They took Usnavi, who never hurt a soul in his life. They would have torn the flesh from her boy’s bones and sold it for a profit. This is what men of greed will do. They will not come near him again, she made sure of that, but Usnavi hasn’t sat watching the ships at the edge of the stone circle since they brought him home.

People call Vanessa cruel. She likes to think she’s just balancing things out.

Speaking of which, she’s found what she seeks, watches for a time to be certain and after a morning and a night there’s no doubt in her mind.

She waits until dark the second night. Both of them deserve to hurt, but since she can only do this to one of them, Jason got lucky. He’ll never even be aware of Vanessa’s existence. The little house is unlit, nobody at home. It’s easy enough to find a way in, by smashing all the front windows with rocks then climbing in through one and destroying all his furniture while she waits. 

Overkill, perhaps, but she likes to make her presence known.

“What the fuck,” she hears, as the door opens. She upends a table casually with a loud crash.

“Who’s there,” says the voice, sharper, coming down the hallway towards the living room where she’s stood. “I don’t know what the hell your game is, but you can be sure you’re going to regret this.”  


“Probably not, though,” calls Vanessa, and he follows her voice.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ian snarls as he enters the room, then looks her up and down and laughs. “Or what the fuck are you, I suppose. A _siren_?”  
  
“You don’t get to know my name,” she tells him. That’s a privilege few have earned, and definitely not this bastard.

“And why are you here? Since when do your kind make house calls?”

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” she says. “Or preferably several.”

“Do you think I’m scared of you, siren?” Ian says, amused. He draws a knife out from where he’d sheathed it at the back of his belt and examines the blade. “You’re hardly the first freak to cross my path.”

“Oh, I’m aware of that,” says Vanessa. “I’ve heard all about you, Ian Price.”

Ian’s eyes widen at the sound of his name, then narrow in anger. “Ruben,” he hisses. “Ruben sent you.”

“Nobody sends me anywhere, sweetheart,” she says. “I go where I will. But yeah, I know Ruben. I know what you did to him.”

Ian gives her a wild grin. His lips are scarred, deep and jagged pitted lines right across the bottom. Ruben said he’d bit him.

“Oh, you do? Did he tell you all about it?” he says, and his tone is mocking. Arrogant, assured, alive. That’s how they all sound at first. “Did he tell you how we owned him from the second he shed his skin? Did he tell you how he cried, how he begged me to stop? Did he tell you how much it _hurt_?”

There’s fury that burns from her centre right down to the delicate hollow fibres of her feathertips, but that’s nothing new for Vanessa. She lets it wait. Soon, soon.

“Yes,” she says, and bares her teeth. Ian’s smile is a wounding and dangerous thing. It has nothing on Vanessa’s. He takes a step back, suddenly wary. “Tell me, Ian. Do you know what it feels like to have someone tear your skin apart?”

Ian doesn’t say anything. He darts forward, but Vanessa is too good at this game. She slams him to the wall, her wings beating an added burst of strength, and he drops the knife at the impact. Her talons rest sharp against the vulnerable skin of his neck. She presses lightly: three thin trails of blood well up.

“Would you like to find out?” she says, and her singsong voice is a sweet melody, full of promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [a/n: straight up i'd let siren vanessa eat my entire heart]

**Author's Note:**

> [a/n: the most magical thing about usnavi is that somehow his hat stays on while he's swimming. i feel like this is possibly true of usnavi even in canon timeline.]


End file.
